The agreement is official, Samsung and Google announce that Wear OS and Tizen are unified, but neither of the current Galaxy Watch will receive the news of Wear OS.
Without a doubt the integration between Wear OS and Tizen It has been one of the news of the day, of Google I / O 2021 and surely also of the quarter and of the year in the industry, and it is that Google has finally set to work to revitalize its operating system to wearables, who had been left to his own devices for many months now.
The novelties presented this afternoon are very important for Wear OS and its future, from its new interface and controls until the arrival of new applications, going through the redesign and better integration of services such as YouTube Music, Maps, Assistant or Pay and the synergy that it supposes have convinced Samsung to leave Tizen for wearables and return to the shelter of Google with their Galaxy Watch, the only alternative on the platform to the Apple Watch.
Neither the Galaxy Watch Active2, nor any other watch with Tizen, will update to Wear OS.
In fact, Samsung will not be the only arrival to Wear OS, which also receive Fitbit services now with the possibility of monitoring our activity and health throughout the day, also promising new high-end devices that work natively with the Google operating system within the Fitbit catalog.
In any case, doubts have remained on the side of Samsung, and it is that the South Korean giant made a cameo in the keynote without delving too deeply into the implications for them leaving Tizen and what this will mean for those who, like me, are currently users of one of Samsung's smartwatches.
So, we have compiled the information and we are going to try to offer you everything we know about the future of the Galaxy Watch from Samsung… Will you join us to see it?
None of the current Samsung Galaxy Watch will receive the new Wear OS
Based on what our colleagues from Android Central told us, it seems that Samsung's abandonment of Tizen for wearables it will not mean the fall of the support of the current Galaxy Watch, on which the South Korean firm had promised up to 3 years of support and at least security updates.
Anyway, there is no party because the reasons to buy a Galaxy Watch4 (or what the next Samsung smartwatch is called) are quite a lot and quite important, well Samsung has already confirmed that there will be no Wear OS for any of the current watches in its catalogNot even for a Galaxy Watch3 with less than a year of life.
At Samsung we always put the customer at the center of everything we do. That is why we are committed to providing the best possible smartwatch experience. For customers who already own a Tizen OS-based Galaxy Watch, we will continue to provide at least three years of software support from the product launch.
Hopefully therefore the following support periods for current Galaxy Watch, but always keeping in mind that they will remain in Tizen until the end of their useful life, and will not receive the new operating system:
| Smartwatch | Launch | Remaining support |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy Watch | Aug 2018 | 3 months |
| Samsung Galaxy Watch Active | March 2019 | 10 months |
| Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2 | 2019 September | 16 months |
| Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 | August 2020 | 27 months |
The official reasons for the decision have not been disclosed, but we understand that they will be around the long-lived Exynos 9110 chipset that gives life to all the Galaxy Watch on the list, although this is a point that we could not confirm for sure. In fact, we do not know if the Galaxy Watch4 will bet on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear or will mount an Exynos option again.
Be that as it may, you can rest easy with your Galaxy Watch for now, although the truth is that we have many reasons to be impatient with the UNPACKED of Samsung that we will experience in August, and with the arrival of a promising new generation of Wear OS that should reinvigorate the competition with Apple in this market wearable.
We will see that yes how Samsung goes about integrating its rotating bezels control, which represent their greatest differentiation, and especially its ecosystem of services with Samsung Health, Samsung Pay and the others now around the whole of Google… It will be time to arm yourself with patience for now!
Related topics: Google, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy, Wear OS, Wearables